


This siren in my head

by darundik



Category: Spider-Man - All Media Types, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018)
Genre: Character Study, Family, Gen, Newfound powers, Spidey Sense, Trust, canonical violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-25
Updated: 2018-12-25
Packaged: 2019-09-27 06:28:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 603
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17156948
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darundik/pseuds/darundik
Summary: Post-saving the multiverse, Miles is left with a ringing bell, and many questions for his newfound spider senses and different family dimensions.





	This siren in my head

**Author's Note:**

> Someone on the YouTube comments of the OST for this movie noticed that the Prowler’s theme sounds a lot like a siren of danger. And I. Couldn’t stop thinking about it. (Also, first posted fic! Finally got to it!)

When he dreams, Miles is hunted. 

Sheer terror focus, sweaty and running, feeling the flitting, solid, looming shadow behind him, the cut of claws above his neck and the ground shaking with pounding metal weight. Every instinct in his body screamed RUN HIDE FIGHT and nothing else could be discerned beyond the static of his senses. Only the spider sense siren groaned around him, a cloister bell inside his mind that repeats its dire warning, over and over and over. 

The first time he heard the siren, he instinctually followed its call: LOOK OUT, bright and urgent against the dullness of the subway tunnel, and he survived a catastrophic wreckage of a collider wall and a Green Goblin thrown piece of the city. 

He had never felt that terror of prey before. Danger, sure, but never prey. Never the fight or flight call for survival, or else. The siren tolls when he needs it, and his heart rate picks up, and his senses focus, and he survives, from a chase to a falling anvil. 

Since the multiverse catastrophe, Miles has used it to elegantly weave around traffic while staring at his phone, to catch someone walking up behind him in the library when his headphones are in, to notice a teacher’s gaze across the room when his eyes flutter in sleepiness from the crime fighting the night before. It’s a useful tool, honestly, in a busy life where not everything can be expected and paid attention to. He trusts that it can protect him in this newfound world of amplified violence and people actually out to kill him. Those are the larger dangers that have larger bells and sirens but so far, none of them had the decibels to terrify him like before. 

He tries not to think of the first time the dull motorcycle rev of a siren fully filled his senses, when he truly felt like prey, tiny, weak, squashable like a disgusting nuisance underneath the hateful intent gaze and heavy pace of the Prowler. The siren was never louder than when heralded by the Prowler’s stalking gait, and never quieter than when captured. 

That static focus was all he remembers of the encounter at the end of Aunt May’s Queens rooftop. Terror. Can’t breathe. Uncle Aaron. 

Around him, a lonely high tone of needless warning. “I know I’m dead,” the quietness screamed, resolved with the pitch of hope, “But maybe I won’t be.”

Too late it tolled for Miles, with claws tight around his neck and feet slipping off the roof tiles. He couldn’t see anything beyond Uncle Aaron’s face slack in shock (of course, he’s shocked, he never expected this, we were never supposed to be here, let it all go back, I don’t want this), and couldn’t feel anything but the pressure around his neck, the air rasping through his throat, his own vice grip on the claws holding him, and the low pitch of the siren. 

Back in normal life, Miles realizes the sheer whiplash of the situation. He had never considered suspecting a loved one of evil, much less imagined himself dangling, close to death, due to them. The siren in his head kept quiet, and he trusted it to keep to its quiet tones of warning instead of pounding resounding terror. If he can’t fully believe the ones close to him, at least he can believe his newfound instincts of predator and prey.

Sometimes though, claws, roof, shadow, terror, danger, danger, danger, danger, and the echo of, “I trusted you.” 

He wasn’t sure if it was for his family or the siren in his head.  


End file.
